SF Playhouse offers a sweet, satisfying Kiss

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Chad Jones

Carrie Paff and Gabriel Marin play actors in a romantic play who share a turbulent romantic past in Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss at San Francisco Playhouse. Below: Marin and Paff, along with Taylor Iman Jones as Angela navigate rocky real life off stage. Photos by Jessica Palopoli

San Francisco Playhouse puckers up and offers a nice juicy kiss for the holidays in Stage Kiss, a delightfully daffy theatrical spin with a touch of real-life melancholy.

This is the first time we’ve seen Ruhl’s play in San Francisco, but the whole Bay Area is alive with the sounds of Ruhl’s empathetic, intelligent, often mystical take on life. Marin Theatre Company and Shotgun Players recently produced her The Oldest Boy (read my review here) and Eurydice respectively. And Berkeley Repertory Theatre is gearing up for her For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday next summer.

There’s a reason Ruhl reigns over theater here (and across the country): her plays are warm, wise, funny and fresh. Stage Kiss, a cautious valentine to the theater (it’s wonderful, but it’s tricky, and its make believe has real-life repercussions), feels like equal parts 1930s theatrical farce and contemporary relationship comedy. The tone, as the director of the show within the show says, is “slippery.”

But the show’s actual director, Susi Damilano, mostly navigates the slip-and-slide tonal shifts deftly and with tremendous warmth. Her cast is headed by three Playhouse MVPs: Carrie Paff is an actress just coming back to the stage after leaving to raise a now-16-year-old daughter; Gabriel Marin is her leading man with whom she shared a turbulent but never quite forgotten romance in the past; and Mark Anderson Phillips is perhaps the worst director of all time (“Just go with your instincts!”). All three have shining moments, but Paff is positively luminous as the unnamed actress (known only as She in the program) whose insecurity gets knocked for a loop when her old lover shows up as her co-star.

The play’s best moments occur in rehearsal for The Last Kiss a (fictional) creaky old play from the early ’30s, the kind of thing that Katharine Hepburn might have starred in and chewed up all the scenery (including her leading man). Ruhl’s dialogue for the play is convincingly awful, but as the former lovers rekindle their affections, their performances in the silly play suddenly become much more intense and passionate.

There’s a second play within the play in Act 2, a tormented love story abut an IRA terrorist and a whore (title: I Loved You Before I Killed you, or Blurry), and though it’s not quite as fun, it’s still got some big laughs, and all that kissing in the first play is replaced by more challenging fight choreography.

The idea of actors kissing in front of an audience – how weird that is, how titillating – gets a lot of exploration. By the former lover co-stars, of course, but also with the leading man’s understudy (a very funny Allen Darby as Kevin). The leading man, who is described as “a 17-year-old in man pants,” says audiences don’t really like all that kissing. “They tolerate it,” he says. “They don’t really like to see the act of kissing onstage, only the idea of kissing onstage. That’s why actors have to be good-looking, because it’s about an idea, an idea of beauty completing itself. You don’t like to see people do more than kiss onstage, it’s repulsive.”

There’s nothing remotely repulsive about any of the kissing on stage, but his point is well taken. Watching people kiss is odd. But it’s also fun in the proper context, and this context is continually interesting for much of the play’s two hours.

Michael Gene Sullivan, like many of the actors, plays multiple roles. He’s playing the husband of the leading lady in the Act 1 play, and then in Act 2, he plays her real-life husband, who turns out to be much more interesting than we might surmise. His observations about marriage and the way he fights to keep his alive is one of the most heartfelt and interesting aspects of the play. “Marriage is about repetition,” he says to his estranged wife, who has gotten carried away by her theatrical nature. “Every night the sun goes down and moon comes up and you have another chance to be good.”

Also strong in supporting roles are Taylor Iman Jones as several characters in the Act 1 play and then as a real-life daughter in Act 2, and Millie DeBenedt, who steals every scene she’s in when she appears in Act 2 as the leading man’s school teacher girlfriend.

The revolving set by Bill English and Jacquelyn Scott conveys a rich sense of theatricality – Act 1 even gets lush red velvet curtains – and is part of the joke when real life turns into theater.

Stage Kiss doesn’t have the depth of some of Ruhl’s other work, but as light, bright comedies go, it has substance. There are some big, robust laughs here. Even better, this turns out to be a Kiss that lingers.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss continues through Jan. 9 at San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$120. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Crazy about Guirgis’ Riverside at ACT

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Chad Jones

Walter “Pops” Washington (Carl Lumbly, left) argues with his son, Junior (Samuel Ray Gates, right), while Oswaldo (Lakin Valdez, center) reads the newspaper in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize–winning comedy, Between Riverside and Crazy, at American Conservatory Theater. Below: Lieutenant Caro (Gabriel Marin) chats with Lulu (Elia Monte-Brown). Photos by Kevin Berne

There’s a crackling vitality on stage the Geary Theater as American Conservatory Theater opens its 49th season with Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy. The play is this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, which doesn’t necessarily guarantee it will be an interesting play, but if you’ve seen any of Guirgis’ previous work – produced locally by San Francisco Playhouse and Custom Made Theatre Company – you know that this is a muscular, compassionate and deeply interesting writer.

If Riverside isn’t as gritty as some of his other work, it more than makes up for that with its fresh approach to the classic American dream-type play. This is Guirgis leaning heavily into Miller and O’Neill territory and staking his claim as a great chronicler of the contemporary American family and the state of that elusive but collectively held dream.

Between Riverside and Crazy is a surprising play in that it deals head on with powerful emotion – between father and son, connected co-workers, lost young man and surrogate father figure – and doesn’t flinch. There are teases of melodrama but then swift left turns that add suspense and keep the edges sharp. And there’s a whole lot of humor, dark humor that elicits satisfying and frequent laughter.

Director Irene Lewis navigates the barbs and the jokes and the shadows expertly with the help of a superb cast that knows exactly how to scale what is essentially a living room drama for the grand space of the Geary. The set by Christopher Barreca adds a touch of cinematic fluidity as the entire apartment set (hints of former Riverside Drive grandeur remain) slides back and forth to signal scene changes to the building’s roof and back again.

Powering a whole lot of the play’s electric charge is Carl Lumbly as Walter Washington, a former New York City cop who caught a “bad break” years ago in an off-duty incident that may or may not have been racially motivated and left Walter with six bullet holes and an ongoing lawsuit against the city.

Walter is a heavy drinker – the play begins at breakfast and he’s already into his cups – with a lot weighing on him. He lost his wife after a long illness about a year prior, and his grown son, Junior (Samuel Ray Gates) has moved back home with his girlfriend, Lulu (Elia Monte-Brown). Walter is also providing shelter for one of Junior’s wayward felon friends, Oswaldo (Lakin Valdez), as he works through his newfound sobriety.

Lumbly’s Walter is cantankerous and acerbic, funny and lively even as he bemoans his fate. He shows true compassion for Oswaldo, and the two of them, as different as they are in age and experience, share a real chemistry. That spark turns out to be one of many. We see it between Lulu and just about everybody she deals with and after a dinner party attended by Walter’s former partner, Audrey (Stacy Ross) and her fiancé, Lt. Dave Caro (Gabriel Marin). And then there’s the Church Lady. Walter receives regular visits from the Church Lady, but he gets a surprise when a new lady shows up, a Brazilian spiritualist played by the always extraordinary Catherine Castellanos, who makes a decidedly non-church-like impact on Walter.

There’s all kinds of tension and affection coursing through this two-hour and 15-minute drama/comedy. So many of the details feel right out of the news: white cop shoots unarmed black man, family threatened with eviction from rent-controlled apartment. But the heart of the play is all about race and power, interesting topics to explore among cops and felons, and the drama comes less from headlines and more from the details and ongoing challenges of everyday life.

There’s a whole lot of game playing going on here, within the family unit and within the larger system. The players here are pretty smart and experienced, and watching them make their moves is the source of abundant pleasure.

This cast is, to put it mildly, beyond belief. Under Lewis’ direction, their performances are perfectly calibrated and able to veer between comedy and drama with aplomb.

Lumbly and Marin are veterans of Guirgis’ work as produced by SF Playhouse. Both actors were in the 2013 production of The Motherfucker with the Hat (read my review here) and in 2007’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train (review here). Marin was also in the Playhouse’s 2006 production of Our Lady of 121st Street. So to say these actors have a familiarity and comfort level with Guirgis’ work is an understatement, and boy does it work to the advantage of Riverside. Their interactions are pointed and tricky and full of intensity and humor.

Valdez as Oswaldo doesn’t get much stage time, but he makes the most of it. Oswaldo is a troubled young man, but a sensitive one, and he emerges as a character you love immediately and want to know more about. As Lulu, Monte-Brown turns what could be a sexpot role into something more complex and interesting. She’s a game player, just like all the others, and claiming her slice of the power pie.

Ross and Castellanos, two of our best local actors, shine as women at very different points in their lives, and Gates as Junior really comes to the fore in a touching scene with Walter as the two men, in their contentious ways, try to express what they mean to each other.

Guirgis has a tremendous ear for dialogue that feels real but better than real. Through his lens, the drama and comedy of life is heightened, and Between Riverside and Crazy feels at times desperate, real and sad and other times hilarious and hopeful.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy continues through Sept. 27 at American Conservatory Theater’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$100. Call 415-749-2228 or visit www.act-sf.org.

Porn, feminism and laughs in Aurora’s Rapture

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Chad Jones

EXTENDED THROUGH OCT. 5.

Alice (Lilian Bogovich, left), Catherine (Marilee Talkington,center), and Avery (Nicole Javier) toast to freedom in Aurora Theatre Company’s production of Rapture, Blister, Burn by Gina Gionfriddo. Below: Gabriel Marin as Don and Talkington as Catherine have a grown-up slumber party. Photos by David Allen

There’s an observation about Internet porn in Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn now at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company that is at once hilarious and trenchant. A college woman encapsulates the ease of access to porn this way: “Once you get directions from Google Maps, it seems such a hassle to unfold an actual map.”

Generational differences and technology come into play a lot in Rapture, a crackling season opener for the Aurora. Gionfriddo is a smart, feisty writer who knows her way around a joke that always contains more than a laugh. She tackles the gargantuan issue of feminism and its evolution into the 21st century and comes through with a stage full of surprising, complicated characters having passionate, always intriguing discussions.

She’s such a sharp writer, in fact, that she’s able to make a case for Betty Friedan on one end of the feminist spectrum and Phyllis Schlafly way on the other side, all the while generating laughs and bothering to imbue her characters depth and heart.

Rapture, Blister, Burn (the title comes from a lyric by Courtney Love) is essentially a two-part invention: one part involves a summer seminar in feminism called “The Fall of American Civilization” taught by a writer described by Bill Maher as the “hot doomsday chick” and attended by a housewife and a college student making a provocative reality show with her boyfriend. The other part is a mid-life crisis triangle in which former grad school friends attempt to correct the mistakes of their past and attempt to travel the roads they didn’t take. The housewife wants to trade in her porn-loving pot-head husband and kids so she can finish the degree she abandoned. And the rock star writer wants to forgo her success for the family she didn’t have.

Director Desdemona Chiang creates a natural but propulsive rhythm to the nearly 2 1/2-hour play, and her appealing cast makes of the most of playing smart, funny people while managing to convey real emotional weight. Marilee Talkington is Catherine, the famous writer who has returned home to care for her supposedly ailing mother (Lillian Bogovich as Alice doesn’t seem nearly as infirm as the daughter makes her out to be). Talkington expertly shifts between Catherine’s intellectual prowess and her emotional confusion as she reopens an old wound.

Catherine’s mother just happens to live in the same town as two significant people from the past: her grad school roommate, Gwen (Rebecca Schweitzer), and her former boyfriend, Don (Gabriel Marin). Gwen and Don are now married with two sons. Gwen works in the home and Don is a dean at the local college. Their marriage is not what you’d call a strong one – she’s a nag, he’s a porn-addled layabout and they have financial problems – so Catherine’s arrival finds them at a particularly vulnerable moment.

To make some extra cash while taking care of her mother, Catherine offers a summer seminar. Gwen signs up and so does Avery (Nicole Javier), a bright college student with distinct views on feminism.

The play takes some surprising turns, and if it comes close to feeling like a sitcom, Gionfriddo’s insightful writing manages to subvert those comfy-cozy expectations. Even Don, the odd man out here, is sympathetic, and through his stoner fog, he displays the smarts that have been dulled by the lack of real challenges in his life. He finds moments of truth (as they all do) when he says with tenderness: “Is that just a monologue you need to say so this isn’t your fault?” It’s a great line at a great moment, but you need to see it.

There are serious issues being bandied about here – the rise of degradation as entertainment, the notion of two empowered people navigating equality, breaking through our own personal mythologies – and no easy conclusions. Rapture, Blister, Burn entertains as much as it provokes, and while it doesn’t exactly blister or burn, it comes pretty close to achieving some theatrical rapture.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn continues an extended run through Oct. 5 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $32-$60. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org.

Say amen – SF Playhouse takes it to Church

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Chad Jones

The Divine Plan for Salvation Church holds its first service in San Francisco Playhouse’s Storefront Church by John Patrick Shanley. The cast includes (from left) Gabriel Marin, Derek Fischer, Rod Gnapp, Carl Lumbly, Ray Reinhardt and Gloria Weinstock. BELOW: Lumbly and Marin address politics and spirituality and the battle between noise and stillness. Photos by Jessica Palopoli

In many ways, John Patrick Shanley’s Storefront Church, now at San Francisco Playhouse for a well-timed holiday run, is less about the battle between the material world and the spiritual world and more about finding the most personal of solutions to the stress and pull and darkness of life: being still.

In such a hectic world, stillness seems practically revolutionary, but that’s where the Rev. Chester Kimmich (Carl Lumbly) finds himself: in stillness waiting for an answer or a way to cross the giant black hole that has opened up before him.

The interesting thing in Shanley’s script, and in director Joy Carlin’s marvelously entertaining but deeply felt production, is that being still in the modern world comes with consequences. You can’t pull away from the world for any length of time without the world coming to look for you. In the Reverend’s case, his withdrawal into the realm of contemplation has real-world consequences. The $30,000 he borrowed from his landlady, a woman of great faith, was supposed to refurbish a storefront church. But months later, with the money spent, the church is still not open, and the landlady is facing foreclosure from the bank.

Is Chester being irresponsible by taking the money and not paying his rent? Or is his devotion so true that stillness and contemplation truly is the only way he can find a solution to his spiritual crisis?

The real world comes calling for Chester in the form of Donaldo (Gabriel Marin) the Bronx borough president who has a personal investment in the Reverend’s fiscal irresponsibility. It turns out that the clash between the ambitious politician and the spiritual seeker is just what each man needed to see himself and his place in the world a little differently.

Sort of a 21st-century It’s a Wonderful Life, weighing the value of the human soul against the human construct of commerce (aka greed), Storefront Church has the nobility of the big questions and the practicality of everyday life. On a fantastic turntable set (by Bill English), we spin through a gritty world of people struggling. Jessie (Gloria Weinstock) and her older husband Ethan (Ray Reinhardt) have financial woes and health concerns to deal with. Their different faiths – she’s a devout Christian, he’s a secular Jew – don’t cause conflict between them. If anything, they seem completely comfortable with their spiritual lives. It’s the money that’s putting on the pressure.

There’s no way that bank employees cannot be the bad guys in this scenario, but loan officer Reed (Rod Gnapp) is pretty sympathetic. Bank president Tom (Derek Fischer), on the other hand, is not. It doesn’t help that Shanley stacks the deck against him by 1) having him actually devour a gingerbread house during a meeting and 2) have him rather implausibly show up to a service at the Rev. Chester’s humble, unfinished church.

Somehow, though, it all works. No one is a monster here, and when the spirit begins to move people, the warmth and emotion comes as much from a simple gathering of people and their connection as it does from the religion itself.

In a way, that’s what theater itself does – gathers strangers, attempts to make them feel something, both individually and collectively, and leave a little bit different. In a broad sense, every theater is a storefront church, and right now the San Francisco Playhouse is shining with a little extra light.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
John Patrick Shanley’s Storefront Church continues through Jan. 11 at San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $30-$100. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Joseph’s Bengal Tiger prowls the SF Playhouse stage

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Chad Jones

Marines (Craig Marker, left, and Gabriel Marin, right) guard a hungry tiger (Will Marchetti) in the bombed-out Baghdad Zoo in the San Francisco Playhouse production of Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph. Below: A night raid goes very badly for translator Musa (Kuros Charney, left) an Iraqi couple (Pomme Koch and Sarita Ocon) and for Kev, a volatile American solder (Marker). Photos by Jessica Palopoli.

The last time San Francisco Playhouse produced a play by Rajiv Joseph — Animals Out of Paper in 2009 — the young playwright was becoming one of the hottest writers in the country. TheatreWorks produced his The North Pool in 2011, just as his Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was preparing to bow on Broadway in a starry production that featured Robin Williams as the titular caged beast.

Joseph, with his Tony Award and Pulitzer nominations, has fully emerged as an American playwright of note and his work is back at San Francisco Playhouse to launch a new season, the second in the stellar theater on Post Street.

In Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Joseph has crafted a challenging war/ghost story that wrestles with the very notion of god (or, if you prefer, God). This world and the next intermingle in the rubble of our desert war as Joseph examines the costs — physical and spiritual — of brutality.

Through performances and design, director Bill English creates a provocative world that allows the poetry of the dead and the garish reality of the living to blend in surprising, moving and perplexing ways. It helps that English is also a masterful set designer who places the action in the remains of a palace that, with the assistance of a few moving set pieces, becomes a topiary garden in a Hussein family manse, a military translator’s office, a hospital room, a bombed-out leper colony and the remnants of the Baghdad Zoo. Dan Reed’s lights and Steven Klems’ sound design add texture and mood to the setting, which is somewhere between dream and waking.

Without a clear protagonist, Joseph’s play is collage of Iraq experiences ranging from the American military (Craig Marker and Gabriel Marin as Marines) to the Iraqi civilian (Kuros Charney as Musa, a former gardener now working as a translator for the Americans). And in between, there are beings from another realm — a recently deceased Bengal tiger from the Baghdad Zoo (a deadpan Will Marchetti), Uday Hussein (Pomme Koch) carrying the severed head of his brother, Qusay, and a young Iraqi woman (Livia Demarchi) tortured and killed by the Hussein brothers.

Joseph doesn’t go down conventional roads with this story in any way and dispatches sympathy and empathy from the start. No one here is terribly likable, but then again, this is death and war. The Americans are ignorant, money-grubbing animals, while the tiger is an admitted atheist deep in thought about his place in the universe. Death brings vast intelligence to the ghosts who, for whatever reason, are still stuck roaming the human realm, and the living just seem to grow less intelligent.

English’s cast brings ferocious authenticity to Joseph’s tricky playing field, and while it’s hard to remain fully emotionally involved in this two-hour play, its provocative power is undeniable. The presence of Uday Hussein is especially troubling — the thought of that kind of evil never quite leaving and continuing to inspire more evil fogs the play with the mist of hopelessness. The only real kindness in the play is shown by a leper (Sarita Ocon) who comforts a man whose damage, greed and selfishness have brought him to his inevitable end.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is a strange, prickly play — not a crowd pleaser so much as an act of thoughtful provocation filled with vivid portraits of ghosts and humans wandering a wasteland of their own creation.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo continues through Nov. 16 at the San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco. Tickets are $30-$100. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Life, death and a ’70s groove in Magic’s Happy Ones

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Chad Jones

Bao (Jomar Tagatac, right) and Walter (Liam Craig) form a unique relationship in Julie Marie Myatt’s The Happy Ones at Magic Theatre. Below: Craig (left) and Gabriel Marin as Gary marvel at the perfection of their Southern California lives. Photos by Jennifer Reiley

At first the music is loud and fun. Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” seems like the perfect audio accompaniment to a grown-up birthday party scene set in a Garden Grove, Califorina, suburban home circa 1975, where the swimming pool gleams and the neighbors all swing with martinis well in hand.

Then tragedy strikes, and there’s silence. The SoCal dream life suddenly has no fitting accompaniment…until it does, and that sound comes from another part of the planet – Vietnam to be exact. There’s a smattering of Creedence, of Paul Simon and Randy Newman. And when the good-time music returns, it’s in the form of Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime,” but the “living the dream” moment has passed, and it’s time for new songs and new chapters.

That’s the story of The Happy Ones, an achingly beautiful play by Julie Marie Myatt now at Magic Theatre. Of course there’s a lot more to the play than the songs and the sound design, but they acutely underscore the emotional ups and downs in director Jonathan Moscone’s shrewdly observed and deeply felt production.

That this is a play about grief shouldn’t dissuade you from seeing it. There’s a lot of comedy packed into the two-hour drama, some of it from the acuity of mid-’70s details in Erik Flatmo’s set and Christine Crook’s costumes. Some of it from the notion that sometimes, when life is at its bleakest, all you can do is laugh.

For protagonist Walter Wells (played with spaniel-like charm by Liam Craig), life is so good he can’t quite believe it. The house, the family, the hardware store he owns, the fun-loving friends, the pool – it’s all so dazzling, Walter can’t quite take it in. Standing outside the Unitarian Universalist Church where his best friend Gary (Gabriel Marin) is the minister, Walter says, “Beautiful women. Beautiful children. Great neighbors. Fantastic jobs. Gorgeous weather.” To which, Gary replies, “Praise God.” And Walter adds, “Praise California…Seriously. This is the dream right here. We got it.”

Such dreams have a way of not lasting. In a way, after everything collapses in on him, Walter remains caught in a world he can’t quite fathom. Just as the good life bedazzled and stunned him, so does grief. Gary can’t reach him, and neither can Gary’s girlfriend, the neighborhood divorcee and busybody, Mary-Ellen (a wonderfully overwhelming and gorgeous Marcia Pizzo). The only person who can cut through Walter’s numbness is a man linked to Walter’s tragedy, a complete stranger named Bao Ngo, a Vietnamese immigrant who was a doctor in his native land, and after the war has found himself far from home working nights in a suburban bakery.

Played with humor, dignity and tenderness by Jomar Tagatac, Bao is an unlikely savior, but what’s really interesting is that Walter turns out to be just as much a savior to Bao, though his unconventional methods include onion dip and barbecued steak with baked potatoes. Sometimes the American dream is only accessible if you can eat it.

The Happy Ones makes for a poignant journey and a nostalgic one if you happened to be alive in the ’70s. The ongoing quest for happiness as a destination (or even as an American birthright) hasn’t changed much in almost 40 years, which is probably why the unlikely relationship between Walter and Bao, bound by loss and grief and the darkest that life has to offer, is so moving. And it’s definitely why Myatt’s play, in its fleeting moments of happiness and hope, is so inspiring.

[bonus interview]
I talked to playwright Julie Marie Myatt for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the feature here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Julie Marie Myatt’s The Happy Ones continues through April 21 at Magic Theatre, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Tickets are $22-$62. Call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org.

Yo, Mofo! SF Playhouse tips a mighty fine Hat

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Chad Jones

Jackie (Gabriel Marin, far left) and Cousin Julio (Rudy Guerrero, left) visit sponsor Ralph D. (Carl Lumbly, right) and his wife Victoria (Margo Hall, center) to discuss suspected misdeeds in the San Francisco Playhouse production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Motherfucker with the Hat. Below: Marin’s Jackie fends off angry girlfriend Veronica, played by Isabelle Ortega. Photos by Jessica Palopoli

[warning: this review does not hide or disguise the word “motherfucker” in the title of the play at hand]

The comedy, the intensity and all that rough language keeps things skittering right along in the San Francisco Playhouse production of The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis. The play is this rush of plot and character and language, then the sadness and despair lands. It takes Lionel Richie and the Commodores to underscore it, but man oh man is it there.

In so many ways, Gurigis’ Hat is about growing up, about taking yourself and the world you live in seriously enough to find purpose and pursue it with as much discipline as you can muster. The grown-ups in the play, let it be said, don’t do such a good job on the discipline part, although most of them have (or find) some degree of purpose.

This is the fourth time the Playhouse has tacked a Guirgis play, and it’s easy to see the attraction to the hefty, funny, complicated worlds that Guirgis creates. Compared to previous shows such as Our Lady of 121st Street and Jesus Hopped the A Train, The Motherfucker isn’t quite as gritty or as dark, but it’s still a substantial work about lives (and lies) in transition.

The main character, Jackie (Gabriel Marin) is fresh out of a 24-month stint in prison for getting caught dealing drugs out of the apartment he shares with his on-and-off girlfriend since the eighth grade, Veronica (Isabelle Ortega). When we meet Jackie, he’s as excited as a puppy getting adopted. He has his sobriety, he has his love and he has a new job. Life is good for Jackie…until it isn’t, and all those things he thought he had require re-evaluation.

Jackie turns to his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, Ralph D. (Carl Lumbly) for solace and guidance, and though the older man appears to be the soul of compassion and grounded intelligence, he’s not quite what he seems. Curiously, though we learn many unsavory things about Ralph and he’s a liar, he really does turn out to be a pretty good sponsor. He’s got a lot of life experience, which results in a fair amount of common sense (if not outright morality). When he says he loves his cranky wife, Victoria (Margo Hall), we believe him, in spite of evidence to the contrary. And when we think Victoria might just be unlovable, we discover a smart, passionate woman with a unique perspective on the truth.

Guirgis is a writer capable of surprising his audience, and that’s a welcome trait here. Probably the most delightful character in the play is Cousin Julio (Rudy Guerrero), who, like Victoria, is a truth teller. But flamboyant Julio has flair and charm and, surprisingly, a wife. He’s a muscle man who likes to cook empanadas on his balcony grill, and when he channels his inner Van Damme, the result is funny but also impressive. Maybe one day Guirgis will write a play all about Cousin Julio.

Director Bill English made a smart choice in set designers by hiring himself to create two New York apartments, one grungy, one pristine, set against a backdrop of brownstones and Cousin Julio’s plant-laden balcony high above it all. Now that the Playhouse is settled into its fantastic new space, the sky is clearly the limit in terms of set design.

English gets some superb performances from his cast, most notably from Lumbly as an AA warrior with a unique perspective on life and love, Hall as a knowing, frustrated wife and Guerrero as the unflappable Cousin Julio. Marin and Ortega also have stellar moments, but as the combustible couple at the center of the story, the one struggling with addiction and adultery, there’s something missing. They both create endearing characters, even at their most obnoxious, duplicitous and self-deluding, but they don’t seem to belong together – and the play seems to want us to think they do.

The play boasts some satisfying laughs and an engaging, “what could possibly happen next” sense of storytelling. But this is a serious piece, though it’s less rooted in the head than it is in the heart. Being a grown-up, even one who makes the right choices and still takes advantage of people, is posited as a better alternative to the freefall of addiction and perpetually indulgent, childish behavior. It’s’ not a terribly hopeful message, but it’s one that’s hard to argue.

[bonus interview]
I talked to playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the interview here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Motherfucker with the Hat continues through March 16 at the San Francisco Playhouse. Tickets are $30-$100. Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Holy Zuzu’s petals! Get into the spirit with Wonderful Life

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Chad Jones

The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play includes (from left) Patrick Kelly Jones as Harry “Jazzbo” Heywood, Carrie Paff as Lana Sherwood, Michael Gene Sullivan as Freddie Filmore and Gabriel Marin as Jake Laurents. Below: Marin’s Jake gets into character as Bedford Falls’ favorite son, George Bailey. Photos by Ed Smith

At a certain point, no matter how much you love Dickens or get your heart cockles warmed by Scrooge and Tiny Tim, you’ve had it. Enough already with A Christmas Carol. Some years you just need to take a Carol break and find a little holiday spark elsewhere.

This year, if you’re searching for an alternative to Ebenezer and his ghosts, I recommend you head to Marin Theatre Company and spend some time with George Bailey and Clarence, his Angel Second Class. It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play takes Frank Capra’s much loved 1946 film and turns it into a stage experience by transforming it into a radio play. As re-conceived by Joe Landry, we’re in a Manhattan radio station on a snowy Christmas Eve as five actors play all the roles and create all the sound effects for a streamlined version of Capra’s story (which itself is based on a short story, Philip Van Doren Stern’s “The Greatest Gift”).

This is a smart approach because it relieves the stage production from having to compete with indelible images from Capra’s movie and allows us the extreme pleasure of settling in and being told a good Christmas story enlivened by a quintet of vibrant performers.

Director Jon Tracy marshals a lot of good energy to keep things from veering into the corny, both within the story itself and within the 1940s context of the radio show, where we get flashes of the “actor” characters who are portraying the characters within the story. Thankfully, there’s not a lot of time spent developing the actors beyond their basic personae. We hear what movie, radio or TV shows they’re most famous for, and that’s about it. This keeps the focus on the “Playhouse of the Air” production of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Landry’s adaptation of the screenplay (by Capra, Frances Goodrich, Jo Swerling and Albert Hackett, with reported “polish” by Dorothy Parker) keeps all the basic details and the framework: beleaguered George Bailey (Gabriel Marin) has had enough of his dreams being killed by small-town life. His ongoing fight to keep his family’s building and loan business afloat has finally crashed (thanks a lot for nothing, Uncle Billy), and so has any semblance of George’s faith and hope in life, wonderful or otherwise.

As townspeople pray for George, the angels we have heard of (on high) take note and make moves to do something about it. An angel who has yet to achieve his wings, one Clarence Odbody (Patrick Kelly Jones) is given an overview of George’s life (also known as Act 1) and then sent down to prevent George from killing himself and then showing himself what the world would be like if he had never been born.

It takes a good long while for the set-up to result in some action, but once George gains a new perspective on the life he has led and the work he has done, It’s a Wonderful Life becomes a mash-up of A Christmas Carol and Our Town. We have supernatural forces intervening in a human life, offering an alternative view of that life and leading to redemption and a new-found appreciation for the intrinsic value of human life – every human life. As Clarence says, “One man’s life touches so many others, when he’s not there, it leaves an awfully big hole.”

Marin’s George is understandably cranky for much of the play’s 100-plus minutes, but when George gets an angelic kick in the spiritual pants, Marin brings on a full-blown nervous breakdown and rebirth. Even when he’s cranky, though it’s easy to see why sweet Mary (Sarah Overman) would be infatuated with George, who’s smart and ambitious and edgy in ways that other Bedford Falls folks are not.

Rounding out the cast in a number of roles are Carrie Paff, most memorable as Zuzu, George and Mary’s sniffly little girl, and Violet Bick, as close as Bedford Falls gets to a vixen, and Michael Gene Sullivan, who gleefully sinks his teeth into “old money-grubbing buzzard” Henry Potter, the bad guy.

Like any good piece of holiday entertainment, this show is warm and entertaining for its first two-thirds and then gets profound and truly emotional in its last section. This Wonderful Life can stand on its own apart from the movie, which is no small feat, and stake a claim for being wonderful in its own right.

[bonus video]
Here’s the original trailer for the movie It’s a Wonderful Life from 1946:

FOR MORE INFORMATION
It’s a Wonderful Life continues through Dec. 16 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets are $36-$57. Call 415-388-5208 or visit www.marintheatre.org.

Shadows fall on suburbia in Yockey’s beguiling Bellwether

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Chad Jones

A strange disappearance: Parents of a missing child (Gabriel Marin and Arwen Anderson on couch) meet with police detectives (Danny Wolohan and Patrick Jones, far left and far right) under the watchful eye of a nosy neighbor (Rachel Harker) in Steve Yockey’s Bellwether at Marin Theatre Company. Below: Anderson meets Kathryn Zdan in the suburban underworld. Photos by www.DavidAllenStudio.com

Audacious, entertaining and chilling, Steve Yockey’s world-premiere Bellwether at Marin Theatre Company goes where few plays dare to tread.

What starts out as a satiric look at suburban living – Bellwether is a nice neighborhood, we’re told over and over again, a gated community commuter distance from an unnamed big city – quickly becomes a potent family drama. A husband and wife (Gabriel Marin and Arwen Anderson) have hit some rocky ground as they and their about-to-turn-7-year-old daughter try adjusting to suburban living.

The show becomes a crime thriller when little Amy disappears from her bed while her mom was downstairs with a neighbor and a bottle of wine. And then it turns into something Stephen King might dream up in a novel or short story. Yockey delves into the underworld of suburbia, a dark, dangerous place that balances the shiny, happy existence up top.

That Yockey – MTC’s playwright in residence for the 2009-10 season – anchors the fantastical aspects of the story with his exploration of family life in the suburbs does him credit. He and director Ryan Rilette manage something very tricky here with a tone that shifts from satirical comedy to high drama to horror.

Much of the success of these tonal shifts come from the utterly believable performances at the center of the story. Marin’s intensity and near hysteria powerfully convey the desperation of a father whose child has slipped away from him, and Anderson, though not as intense, displays guilt and determination in equal measure.

Rachel Harker as a needy, nosy neighbor is extraordinary. She’s like a sitcom character at first but goes through several iterations, all of which she fills with depth and frightening accuracy.

At less than two hours, Bellwether grabs your attention immediately and only tightens its grip as it zips along. I would say that Yockey spends too much time in the underworld – where there is fine work by Jessica Lynn Carroll and Kathryn Zdan. We get a sketchy explanation about how this world works, but it could be swifter and more enigmatic. We don’t want too much time to linger and think about this situation because implausibilities start popping up alongside questions that don’t get answered.

Back on the strangely quiet streets of Bellwether, Yockey and Rilette whip up an increasingly wild mob of neighbors (including Danny Wolohan, Liz Sklar, Marissa Keltie, Mollie Stickney and Patrick Jones) and a trio of inane (naturally) and vampiric TV news reporters.

Bellwether packs quite a punch, from the striking performances to the sumptuous two-level suburban home set by Giulio Cesare Perrone and sinister lighting by York Kennedy.

When the play ends, and it’s hard to know what to think exactly because your head is spinning. Was it funny? Scary? Moving? Yes. Bellwether is, in short, fantastic. In every sense of the word.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Steve Yockey’s Bellwether continues through Oct. 30 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets are $34-$55 ($15 rush tickets available one hour prior to show, based on availability; under 30: $20, all performances). Call 415-388-5208 or visit www.marintheatre.org.

Aurora premiere bridges gap between comedy and Collapse

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Chad Jones

Amy Resnick as Susan does an upward facing dog during a conversation with Gabriel Marin as David and Carrie Paff as Hannah in Allison Moore’s Collapse at the Aurora Theatre Company. Below: Aldo Billingslea is the enigmatic Ted, a stranger who gets to know Paff’s Hannah. Photos by David Allen

Sometimes things collapse. Sometimes buildings and bridges, things that are built to physically support us. And sometimes marriages and families, things that are meant to sustain and bolster us, crumble as well.

Both kinds of ruin are examined – sometimes to hilarious comic effect – in Allison Moore’s Collapse, a rolling world premiere at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company. The concept of a rolling premiere is essentially a collaboration, in this case with the National New Play Network and Curious Theatre in Denver and Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas.

Director Jessica Heidt’s sharp, wildly entertaining production begins on rather a sly note. She has pitched her actors to an extreme level of discomfort, yet their goal is to appear perfectly normal and happy. It’s a total sitcom situation – living room set and all – as David (Gabriel Marin) attempts to inject the posterior of his wife, Hannah (Carrie Paff), with fertility drugs. Their chipper anxiety about the fertility process is masking something else. We don’t know what, but we sense it’s serious. He’s drinking too much, she’s worried about being laid off from her legal firm and there’s a shadow looming over their relationship.

The sitcom rhythms continue with the arrival of Hannah’s kooky sister from California, Susan (Amy Resnick) – why do all the kooks have to be from California? Sure enough, this one almost immediately announces her life as crumbled, so she’s moving back home to Minneapolis and will crash with her sister and brother-in-law for the foreseeable future. Then she starts doing yoga.

There’s nothing wrong with sitcom rhythms when they’re done well – and this trio of actors is superb. But there’s more to Moore’s play than what first appears. This is a rollicking comedy with decidedly serious undertones, and before too long, it feels like a drama – a beautifully written and produced drama – more than it does a sitcom. And that’s a wonderful thing.

The shadow looming over Hannah and David is actually, physically looming over them in Melpomene Katakalos’ set design. In addition to the spare settings for a living room, a diner or a support group, the intimate Aurora space is filled with pieces of a bridge – Minneapolis’ I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River, to be exact, the one that collapsed in August of 2007 and killed 13 and injured 145.

That horrific accident affected Hannah and David personally, and they have spent the last year and a half (the play is set in 2009) confronting and avoiding the issue, but mostly suffering through their own personal and matrimonial hell.

Hannah is so on edge that when she meets the enigmatic Ted (Aldo Billingslea) at a support group meeting, she immediately falls under this Southerner’s spell. Is he a nice guy or a master manipulator? It’s hard to tell, and Billingslea’s smoothly sexy performance makes it almost impossible to know for sure. Listen to him croon, “Oh, I will be your bulldog” and you’ll gain a whole new appreciation for people from Georgia.

It’s amazing that from under the rubble of a collapsed bridge, a collapsed economy and collapsing relationships that Moore can find any laughs, but there are plenty in this brisk but fully satisfying 80-minute one-act. There’s silliness skittering over some serious darkness, but the play never feels frivolous. Those sitcom stereotypes that we see at the start of the show, deepen into richer characters than we might expect. Even Susan, the kook, whose every laugh is mined by the brilliant Resnick, earns our sympathy. Her West Coast spiritual facade is a kind of armor she wears to combat the constant string of failures in her life. She means well and will likely continue stumbling through the years, opening herself to the “universal flow.”

And Paff and Marin show us the real pain stabbing Hannah and David, and the real affection that brought them together in the first place. There’s a good marriage between good people at stake here, and you feel that acutely by play’s end. Things may collapse, but they can also be rebuilt.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Allison Moore’s Collapse continues through March 6 at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $34-$45. Call 510-843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org for information.

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